


Bittersweet Sixteen

by thatredscarf



Series: Red’s Ishimondo Universes [3]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), Angst, But it’s just a paragraph don’t worry, Child Abuse, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Kiyotaka Ishimaru has OCD, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29967384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatredscarf/pseuds/thatredscarf
Summary: Kiyotaka has severe arithmomania, a form of OCD that his father is determined to keep under wraps to maintain his spotless reputation. Kiyotaka goes untreated, and it gets worse.To top it all off, a mysterious new classmate is messing up his counts on the daily; how long until Taka loses his composure?
Relationships: Ishimaru Kiyotaka/Oowada Mondo
Series: Red’s Ishimondo Universes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2212377
Comments: 7
Kudos: 36





	Bittersweet Sixteen

**Author's Note:**

> Arithmomania is a strong desire to count your surroundings. I experience this frequently, though not as severe as Kiyotaka does in this work, and I haven’t seen any representation of it anywhere. I thought it was sort of a Taka thing to do, so here, I have created another angsty (possibly sad-ending) Ishimondo fic where I spend the entire time projecting onto Taka.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru’s favorite number was sixteen. He loved to count to sixteen. It was a curse and a blessing, to be besotted to count anything and everything in such a way; there’s the state of euphoria that rushed over him, the wave of overwhelming and all-consuming ecstasy that crashed into his very soul when the numbers were even, the rapturous shockwaves that shot up his spine in the aftermath- but there were also the needles, the needles of profuse unease that plunged into every inch of his body and pumped him full of dread, or sometimes a tiger roared and battered its claws into his brain, when he counted to an odd number. Odd numbers were erroneous, ruled illicit by his own mind. 

Whether they were good or bad, the feelings consumed Kiyotaka. They swallowed him whole and rushed through his veins, and like the thorny stems of a rose, the tendrils of digits wrapped around and suffocated his being. Kiyotaka was in the backseat, and his numbers took the wheel. All he could do is watch as the broken semi truck that is his mind crash and tumble, barrel through any relationships he was lucky enough to keep for more than a few rare moments. 

Kiyotaka Ishimaru loved his name. He counted the letters. K-I-Y-O-T-A-K-A is eight letters. I-S-H-I-M-A-R-U is eight letters. Eight plus eight is sixteen, and everything is perfect. Four is a quarter, and that makes eight a half, so sixteen is whole.

Kiyotaka was a slave to his impulses, the eights and fives and fourteens that soaked up his attention as his eyes opened and he counted the pictures on his dresser, the books on his shelving, the legs of the chair pushed into his desk; he counted his teeth, he has twenty. Perfect. Even. Eight molars, twelve incisors, and it sent a giddy feeling through his body that started in his chest and tingled throughout his limbs, expelling with sparks at his fingertips and in his brain.

He spent ten minutes counting his room, everything, four times- partially to make sure he’d counted correctly, but sometimes he sought comfort in the even number- before he shot out of bed and marched to the bathroom, counting the twelve steps it takes to get there and the fifty degrees east he turned to face himself in the mirror.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru was incredibly smart. On bad days, when it was all odd and wrong, when the wires in his mind were sewn together, rubbed and severed by the feeling, he sat in his room, and studied for four hours precisely. He read two textbooks, at a thousand words per minute, which is sixty-thousand an hour, a hundred twenty for two, and two hundred and forty thousand for four hours. He read to stray his mind from the counts, but he couldn’t stop himself from noticing how that chart had three rows, and there were only twenty seven words in that paragraph.

Kiyotaka was incredibly smart, but his counts became a problem when he went to school. There were just too many things. The fifteen times the teacher pressed her chalk to the board, the eight books stacked on the shelf in the back, the thirty two lines on the sheet of notebook paper; the list continues. He was always distracted by his counts, but his favorite was the students in his class. Exactly twenty, including himself, even and perfect. His hand itched to grab the pencil and do his work, and sometimes he did, but the numbers  always came first.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru’s father once got a call home from school to inform him his son is failing half his classes.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru was hit seven times by his father; he wished he would strike once more to make it even, but he didn’t dare say so.

Ishimaru pushed those thoughts out of his head in favor of brushing his twenty teeth. He stood in the bathroom until his wristwatch told him it was 7:06, and he allowed himself to tramp down the stairs. He counted them, of course (sixteen, sixteen, sixteen, sixteen), as he made his way to the kitchen, where he brewed up a cup of coffee for his father and dished two bowls of rice. Kiyotaka set the table for two, sat down, and ate breakfast by himself. Maybe counting the seconds he chews would keep his troubled mind off the empty seat across from him.

He counted the books in his bag, the eyelets in his boots as he laced them, and went out the front door. After counting the sidewalk cracks on his way to school, Kiyotaka found himself at the front steps, where the doors burst open and he was met with a cacophony of sounds, colors, and people.

It was going to be a long day.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know if you like it so far in the comments! I’ve had this sitting in my notes half-finished but I’ve been trying my best to get back into writing, so I completed it this morning. The chapters after this one are most likely gonna be a lot longer than this, it’s more like dipping my toes into this sort of writing style. I like to switch up how I write when it’s from the POV of a different character, which is why this might contrast a lot from the works I have written in Mondo’s perspective.


End file.
